She was starting to feel a little -- off. Not quite woozy, nowhere near dizzy -- there might have been some difficulty in judging those states while within one of bruised semi-concussion -- but a place where she could feel those two conditions waiting for their chance. And so she landed, because that was one of the things flight camp made sure you knew: there were situations you couldn't fly in and when they began to threaten, you had to touch down. Running low on energy was one of the things nopony messed with.
Pegasi had high metabolisms: that was just about universal for the race. If you flew a lot, then you needed to eat more, rest more. You took in calories, you burned them off, you ate again and then you napped while your body processed the fresh fuel. Rainbow needed food, and perhaps needed it more badly than the orange mare had understood. Flight was magic, and magic took power -- at least two kinds of it.
She was trotting when she entered town. Trotting across ground, then the bridge, and that was followed by cobblestones. She was sore everywhere she'd been hit, and just about everywhere she hadn't been was where she'd hit. The only places which seemed to have escaped were the very bottom of her hooves, and now the cloudless world was taking care of that.
Rainbow tried not to moan aloud, kept her focus on moving forward. There was food somewhere. It was late enough in the day for just about everything to be open, at least in Cloudsdale. Ponyville, even with its sudden desire to punish her, probably wasn't going to close every shop just to make her feel bad. In fact, there was a really big one just up ahead --
-- she blinked a few times, forced her eyes to focus on the words.
Barnyard Bargains.
(And there was a moment when ground faded, vapor swirled in and the sky changed to its proper shade. She pushed that vision away, and then she desperately wished to have it back.)
I know Barnyard Bargains. I know the one in Cloudsdale. And they're supposed to be just about all the same inside. I can find anything in there. I'll know where the food is, and -- the fire stuff.
I'll know about something.
It was an oasis, and Rainbow rushed towards the mirage of comfort.
She stared at the price tag. Blinked a few times, then read it again.
That's wrong.
It was the lack of food. She was seeing numbers which weren't there. Fortunately, there was an easy cure for that: Rainbow pulled her tiny cart to the checkout section, paid for the small bag of candy she'd already found (and just where it should have been), then spent a few minutes sucking on the sweet before returning to the Devices & Wonders section.
There wasn't much to look at in that area. No Barnyard Bargains did much with enchanted items unless they were basic, time-proven, or in seriously high demand: convenience stores took the major pieces and Rainbow was vaguely aware that some places covered experimental stuff, mostly because she'd once seen some pictures of the larger explosions. But fire stuff fell under all three stock categories, and so there was a section of shelf which held what she needed.
She looked at the price again, through sugar-boosted eyes. Counted her bits again, compared the numbers.
Everything she had left in the world, times two.
I thought...
...I put aside enough for food. That was all I needed to reach my first pay voucher. I could spend everything else, and those fountains were just so cool -- ostentatious? -- cool. I could afford the fountains. And now I need the fire stuff, I can't return the fountains because they have to be mailed back, I won't have money for two weeks...
How long to get a letter home, ask for help? Could her parents send her funds in less than a week?
No. It didn't matter. The fastest method of contact would cost her the bits she needed for keeping herself fed, and she'd already learned about the true cost of taking free food.
Would Passing -- Mr. Showers give me an advance?
She'd known him for less than a day, and that was more than enough to give her the answer.
If I don't get the fire stuff, my house...
She couldn't steal it. (There was a moment when she thought about it, if only as a fantasy, and still more when the consequences for getting caught played on the inner cinema screen.) She couldn't pay for it. There were banks, but she felt that was the sort of thing where paperwork and time got involved. And when it came to personal loans, she didn't know...
...no. Not her.
I saw her from the air the other day, when I was going out for lunch. She was easy to spot. She always had that really full tail, even in flight camp, or at least the start of it. Those fur and mane shades. She's taller now, not so -- stretched. But it was her, I knew it was her. I came to a place I'd never been and there was a pony I'd met before. A pony I --
-- I didn't know, nopony told me what happened until I got back, I'd just found my mark and then the counselors found out we'd gotten away from them because we all knew they would have stopped the race if they learned we were having one, but they found out what happened to her and she was okay, but she almost wasn't and I --
-- I didn't mean to. I never meant to.
Her parents pulled her out of flight camp. I nearly got sent home. The only reason they let me stay is because nopony could figure out just who knocked her over. Who made her fall.
Who nearly... killed her.
I still don't remember any impact. I don't think it was me. I...
...maybe -- maybe she doesn't even remember me. Couldn't pick me out of a crowd. I'm not the only prismatic in Equestria. There's got to be other ponies with my fur and mane colors out there. Maybe she --
-- we're in the same settled zone.
I can't talk to her.
I don't think I can ever talk to her.
No money. Becoming a criminal was out. What was left?
Rainbow silently arched her neck, nosed the box she couldn't afford, moving the price out of sight. It brought a side panel into view, and the lower right corner bore words she should have expected: Made In Cloudsdale. The reading almost made her feel dizzy, and she went for the candy again.
Of course it's made in Cloudsdale. If it's magic involving heat, a pegasus has to create it. Unicorns make devices and pegasi create wonders. I flew by the factories sometimes on the way back from school, if I wanted to do the loop-friendly route. And if it wasn't Cloudsdale, it would have been another pegasus settlement, because that's the only way to --
She stopped, examined the thought more closely.
Pegasi make wonders.
I know one pegasus in this settled zone really, really well.
And I know she's good. Under pressure, she's the best. She just has to prove it to everypony else.
Fire stuff should be basic...
"No eating in the library," declared the yellowed mare. (Not yellow: yellowed, like paper which had been out in the sun for far too long.)
"But it's just sweets!" Rainbow protested. "It stays in my mouth! Completely in my mouth. It won't touch the stupid books or anything!"
Near-white eyes blazed.
"You're a new patron," the elderly unicorn said. (Rainbow was starting to wonder if the entire town was being run by old ponies.) "I know I've never seen you in here before. So you don't know the rules. And the first rule is that there is no eating in the library. Ever. So if you want a book, you will step outside, spit out the candy into the proper trash receptacle, and then come back. With the understanding that if I find you eating, you will be kicked out."
Rainbow stared at her.
"And now you know that rule," the librarian stated. "So are you going to follow it?"
Five minutes. Five minutes tops to find the book she needed and get out.
"Yes," Rainbow said. And she meant it, at least for that value of sincerity which would hold up for five minutes.
"Thank you. Outside, please."
It wasn't a particularly large section of the library: less than a shelf. Much less. It was small enough that it took considerably more than five minutes to spot, because it wasn't as if Rainbow was familiar with how libraries were laid out: not for those inside vapor, and certainly not for anything kept within a tree. But at the same time, it wasn't as if she was going to ask the librarian for help. Wandering around until she saw the right thing sufficed.
There were only a few books on the subject: considerably less than Rainbow would have expected, given how vital the information seemed to be. And to top it off, most of them were in bad condition, worse than anything else she'd seen in the library. The majority were at least moderately scarred, and some of the wounds appeared to be electrical.
She had to squint past a particularly ill-placed scorch mark in order to make out the words on the largest spine.
Wonders-All: Home Enchantments For The Enterprising Pegasus!
Rainbow pulled the thick book off the shelf. There was a lot of text on the back cover, which mostly concerned saving money or starting a home business or whatever the author had meant to say in the place where the blackening completely took over. The front showed a pegasus who was beaming as she sat with her wings stretched out across mounds of bits. Several wonders surrounded her and every last one looked to have been professionally made, except for those where the book's damage made it seem as if they'd been professionally arsoned.
Pages were hastily flipped. And sure enough, there it was. Fourth chapter.
I knew it. Fire alarm and suppression system! They can be made outside a factory! Thoughtfully, Of course they can. Somepony had to make the first one, and that was probably back before factories were invented. So all I have to do is take this home, read it, and then I enchant...
Rainbow proudly carried the book to the librarian's desk, gently setting it down. It left the inside of her mouth tasting like overcooked peach skins.
"To go, please," Rainbow beamed.
The librarian slowly looked her over.
"You're new," she said. "Are you new to the library, or the settled zone?"
"Ponyville," Rainbow honestly answered.
"And how long have you been here?"
It felt like an odd question. "This is my sixth day."
The mare nodded. "You may apply for a library card in twenty-two more. After one full moon has passed. That is library policy."
Rainbow's house evaporated before her eyes.
"But --" she quickly began, and found she'd started too soon to have a second word ready. "But --!"
"To make certain," the librarian continued, "that nopony leaves with any of our precious volumes because they just happen to be passing through town. So that we know where they can be found. One moon of residency, and then you may apply."
"...but...!"
The near-white eyes slowly went over Rainbow's trembling form. (She hadn't felt it when she'd started shaking. She couldn't seem to make herself stop.) The yellowed features softened.
"You know," the elder mare gently said, "that you can just read it here."
Rainbow forced herself to pick the book up again, carefully carried it to a quiet corner. There seemed to be ponies watching her as she moved through the tree. Well, that made sense. Not only was she new in town, but in Rainbow's extremely expert opinion, she was well worth looking at. Most ponies with taste would take a moment to check her out, and the fact that all four knees were shaking while her wings vibrated at two completely different tempos had nothing to do with it.
She settled down with the book, began to read. And really, it didn't seem all that complicated. You needed a housing (which couldn't be too large, or too small, and wood was right out), and you needed some copper because when a pegasus wanted the inherent magic of their body's field to conduct into the inanimate, copper was just about an absolute requirement. And there was a way which the wire had to be bent, shapes it needed to be in for some reason, but those were illustrated. Basic stuff.
But then there was talk about the magic itself. How you needed to be capable of shifting heat by yourself, and Rainbow qualified there: it wasn't her best technique, but nopony was going to be hired by the Weather Bureau if they didn't know something more than the basics. However, that was followed by paragraphs about feel. Spending time in the presence of a sample for the wonder you were trying to make, that was supposed to help. Learning how the enchantment registered on that vital sixth sense. Trying to duplicate. Manipulating your own field here and there, pushing and prodding, until the feel which surrounded you was just like the feel of the wonder. And then allowing your magic to conduct outwards, giving some of your own energy to the copper, and then the new creation would possess a power of its own...
But by that point, her vision was starting to blur. She needed more than just candy and she wasn't even allowed to have that much, not in here, trapped inside cold wood instead of being perched on welcoming vapor. Rainbow's body was demanding calories and she was in an isolated part of the library, completely out of sight, surely one careful movement would get past scrutiny which didn't exist, buy her enough time to finish reading...
She did it. No librarian screams rang out and she gratefully sucked on the sugar, trying to keep her cheek movements at a minimum. Forced herself back into focus as boring, repetitive words droned across her inner ear. Words she needed. Something she absolutely had to pay attention to.
The sugar helped, as far as it could. But her body needed more than sugar.
A hoof gently nudged her shoulder, and Rainbow blearily opened one eye.
"Dear," the librarian softly said, "you fell asleep. I'm not used to ponies taking naps in my library. If you're that weary and need the book so badly, I suppose I can make an except --"
Which was when Rainbow's head came up, and the last bit of undissolved sweet tumbled out of her half-open mouth.
"-- GET OUT!"
So as it turned out, there were places on her body other than her hooves which hadn't been hurt by either apples or impact, and the process of being kicked out of the library covered pretty much all of them. But because it had been a first offense, she had only been banned for a mere week.
However, she'd read the book. (Well, most of the relevant section.) She knew what she was supposed to do. (Of course she knew.)
She was sure she could remember the diagrams: the shapes had been funny enough to stick in her head. She'd read all about conduction and feel and there had been something about sensitivity, plus she thought she'd seen a paragraph containing the words critical overtap just before she'd found herself flying with the all-time Wonderbolts team again, but that had been in the section which didn't seem to be so much about how you made the fire stuff as what it did when it was operating, and she already knew about that: it detected and suppressed fires. And when it came to critical overtap, Rainbow felt as if she'd already spent all of her time in Ponyville in being criticized and she was totally sick of it, so that could go get chained in Tartarus. Anyway, it wasn't important how it worked. It was only important that it worked.
She forced herself to move, when every hoof hurt. She found a restaurant hosted by a kind-faced dark green pegasus who offered to let her taste-test his newest recipe at no cost, and so wound up paying absolutely nothing for the contents of the subsequent illness. Once the scent of vomit had faded, she picked up fruit on the wind, followed her nose to the town's open-air market, and then veered away before the mare running the apple cart could spot her. That put her at the bakery, which was still closed...
Eventually, she found a place selling dumplings, and went for as many as she could manage. After that, it was back to Barnyard Bargains, because the book had advised her to spend time in the presence of a sample wonder. It left her standing in that one section of aisle for as long as she could stand it, or rather, right up until a staff member passed her for the fourth time with the same 'I am about to ask what you're doing staring at that box, and then you might get to explain yourself to the police' expression on his face that she'd seen on the last three employees.
It hadn't been easy. She'd never really tried to extend her senses like that, not for a wonder. It was different with living magic: just about every young pegasus tried to figure out techniques before they were formally instructed in them, especially when it came to the cool stuff like lightning. (And just about every young pegasus who had just reached casting age found that for no apparent reason, all of the adults had stopped doing cool stuff around them.) But to try and puzzle out a weaving which was being channeled through the inanimate, something which might not even be fully active within the box because that would run down the charge, and then there was just trying to conduct her senses through that box...
She'd tried to refine her focus, concentrate on nothing except the contents. It hadn't been easy: Rainbow wasn't used to trying for extended periods of deliberate tunnel vision, and the stares of those passing by kept interrupting her. Still -- it had felt as if there was something, sensations too complicated to be produced by a dumpling-fueled imagination. She'd done everything she could to memorize those feelings, right up until the moment her second kick-out of the day appeared to be on the edge of certainty, and then she'd left at what she felt was a completely normal trot. It certainly would have been a normal trot for anypony who wasn't having that much trouble with her hooves.
After that -- well, the housing wasn't an issue: just about anything could serve as the housing, and she wasn't going to be particularly fussy. But such things had a cost -- copper wire certainly did -- and she still had to be careful about taking too much away from her food money.
Fortunately, there were ways to potentially bring such expenses down, although it helped if you weren't dealing with any orange earth pony mares and remembered to ask first.
When she finally found it, the battle-scarred fix-it shop (a building which really would have been better off as a cloud, as the entire structure seemed to have shifted about two hoofwidths off its original foundation and couldn't simply be pushed back) turned out to be managed by a slow-moving unicorn named Mr. Tinker. He was a pony who had certain reservations about letting anypony rummage through his garbage. He also happened to be a stallion who, in Rainbow's judgment, had an eye for well-lofted wings, and while he was far too old and boring and slow for her (and why were so many ponies slow?), she was more than willing to add a few strategic feather twitches into the conversation.
"I'm not sure you understand," the unicorn tried again. "Yes, I keep some copper wire around, and there's even some in the trash. I have to strip it out of malfunctioning wonders, to make them safe for shipment to the nearest qualified repair facility. Some ponies just keep bringing me things by mistake. They don't understand that I'm a device mechanic."
"But you have some!" Rainbow reminded him. (She wanted to get out of the dirty shop. She wanted to preen. She'd been wanting to preen her wings for hours. She was sure there was some dirt stuck among the flight feathers.) "And you're not using it!"
"It's from malfunctioning wonders," he weakly said. "I'm sure the thaums discharged once it was removed, but I have no way to know. And when it comes to the housings --"
"But I'd know!" Rainbow quickly cut in.
"-- they're just about all from the same kind of source --"
"It doesn't matter! I'm not going to be using them for anything dumb! I'm just going to make some --" and her imagination desperately tried to stay within what was turning out to be a rather complicated spontaneous stunt "-- art!"
He wasn't looking at her wings any more. That was okay. Some ponies liked eyes too.
"Art," the stallion repeated.
"Yeah! Because --" with her neurons starting to feel the gravity pull of the spiral "-- I just moved here! My place is really empty. It needs some touches. Inside. Like you see in the magazines. Because I mostly spent on fountains and I put those outside. If they were inside, like in the bathroom, they might splash the floor. And then it's the evaporation pull to the stations, plus it might get into the pucky trail and I really don't want to clean out prismatic pucky once a season, especially when there should really be somepony who does that for me. So I thought I'd just take some old housings and a little wire which nopony was using, bend them around a little, put them on the wall, maybe in a frame, and then it's art!"
He was now looking directly at her mark.
"I can make art if I want to," Rainbow said.
The unicorn sighed, and his grease-stained fur shifted along the thin body. "Miss -- Dash, was it?"
"Rainbow," she tried.
"Even with things which are completely discharged, something that's been enchanted once before... I'm not even sure, when it's a wonder instead of a device, if there's any residual --"
There would have been more words, but they died on his tongue. The cause was heatstroke, and the temperature continued to rise.
Rainbow briefly tilted her head away from her left wing.
"Please?" she asked, and then her tongue went back to preening.